Emerson, Lake & Powel : Let's go back to 1986

"Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends” sings Greg Lake on superb opening track The Score — implying, none too subtly, that this relatively unsung album should be placed within the ELP legacy. With Carl Palmer still contractually stapled to an ailing Asia, a planned mid-1980s ELP reunion required a different third member, which Emerson and Lake found in Cozy Powell, just out of hard rockers Whitesnake. That his surname began with a "P" was a useful coincidence.
The new recruit’s bombastic style on the kit was perfectly suited to the tone that Emerson and Lake had in mind, with a return to long-form music — at least to a certain extent.
The resulting album — the only one by the trio, although there was a tour that dug liberally into the ELP back catalogue — is one of two halves. The first side makes excellent use of Emerson’s love of a big fanfare, awash with massive polysynths across its three tracks. The Score revolves around a huge synth theme, while The Miracle, which closes the first side, throbs tensely across its seven minutes, livened by Lake’s catchy chorus and a nostalgia-inducing Emerson organ solo. With the excellent Learning To Fly a palate cleanser between the two epics, it was a massive return to form at the time. That said, producers Tony Taverner and Lake drench the music in a huge, stadium-evoking reverb that suits it well, especially Powell’s drumming, yet places the album sonically in the mid-1980s.

Side two is a touch less successful, returning largely to the song-orientated approach of ELP’s late-i970s music. It begins well enough with Touch And Go, its theme based on the English folk song Lovely Joan and showcasing an excellent, bluesy vocal from Lake. Love Blind is generic, if catchy,
1980s pop/rock, while the stadium reverb is toned down momentarily for the jazzy, humorous Step Aside, with Emerson showing off his jazz piano chops. However, Lay Down Your Arms, co-written with Rare Earth’s Steve Gould, is a horrid, cloying piano ballad. Holst’s Mars: The Bringer Of War is a faithful enough arrangement, but some of Emerson’s patch choices haven’t worn especially well, and Palmer rather than Powell might have added a touch more nuance to the arrangement. It’s a rousing enough closer, but an ultimately uninspiring one.
Given this album’s popularity in the early days of CD, to have this vinyl reproduction is a touch ironic, but welcome nonetheless. Despite a slightly less-than-stellar second side, this is a really interesting sidebar in the history of ELP — regardless of which ‘P’ is on the drum stool.